New Music Section At MACWORLD

Attendees of this weekis MACWORLD Expo will be witness to a new special interest area at the show, the Music and Audio Area. The area will feature companies focusing on music creation and performance, but will also host daily concerts and a special "keynote" for fans of Mac music. According to MACWORLD organizers:

Macworld Conference & Expo is celebrating the introduction of its new Music and Audio Special Interest Area with daily one-hour concerts by well-known musical groups and a special music keynote as part of the comprehensive conference program.

Offering both professional and amateur musicians an outstanding opportunity to learn more about creating music with their computers, the new Music and Audio Special Interest Area will showcase the latest products and tools for music and audio creations, production, processing, mastering, CD authoring, MP3 publishing, music education and networking.

Among the many highlights of the four-day Macworld Conference and Expo, held July 18-21 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, will be a special music "keynote" address by Larry Fast, SYNERGY Electronic Music Inc., on Wednesday, July 19th: 11:00 am - 12:15 pm.

Larry Fast is best known for his series of pioneering electronic music albums recorded under the project name SYNERGY. He is also known for his work with Peter Gabriel; playing synthesizer on records and on tour, and rounding out the production team on many of Peteris albums for nearly a decade. Fastis technical background has allowed him to stay ahead of the curve of studio technology. Starting with custom-designed synthesizer modules he constructed for Rick Wakeman of Yes, built while Fast was still a student at Lafayette College in the early 1970is, he has been involved in the evolution of the tools of recording. Fast served as a consultant to Moog Music in the development of the Polymoog (1976) and Memorymoog (1982) synthesizers including voicing many of the Memorymoog factory presets. On two associated projects in the late 1970is at AT&T Bell Laboratories (now Lucent Technologies) Fast worked with direct-to-disk digital recording, sampling and resynthesis, computer control of synthesizers, computer generated FM synthesis and other techniques years before they entered the mainstream.

Free Concerts by Major Musical Groups:

While the identity of the musical groups will remain a secret until the show, each group will perform one-hour live concerts directly from the show floor. Taking place at noon each day and open to all attendees, the special in-show concerts will feature three of todayis hottest musical groups demonstrating the capabilities of the latest updated and enhanced products available for Mac computers.

Macworld also offers special music and audio conference sessions and workshops for musicians wanting to digitize their work, and Mac users that want to make music. The three-day Macworld Users Conference features a "Mac Musician Recommended Itinerary," which includes the following classes for Mac Users of various skill levels on a variety of topics:

Beginners Guide to Music on the Mac

MIDI Demystified

Getting Started with MP3

Software Synthesis for the Mac Musician

Music on the Web

Software Synthesis

A full-day workshop; RealAudio and MP3 on the Mac: The State of The Art Macintosh Audio.